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  • Glendale: Mending discord between students

    Glendale News Press
    LATimes.com
    March 26 2004

    Mending discord between students

    Community leaders and pupils say relations have improved, but more
    can be done

    By Gary Moskowitz, News-Press


    GLENDALE - Differences among local youth - be it racial,
    socioeconomic or just simple misunderstand- ings - have led to
    tragedy in Glendale.

    On May 5, 2000, Hoover High School student Raul Aguirre was stabbed
    to death across the street from his school in what police believe was
    a gang-related incident. Aguirre was not a gang member. The man
    accused of stabbing Aguirre is Armenian American.

    A group called We Care for Youth, which formed in 1992 to work toward
    stopping youth violence in the community, offered Hoover High
    students grief support after the incident.

    Group co-founder Jose Quintanar said representatives from the local
    schools, city, Glendale Community College and the community held
    forums in the late 1980s and early '90s, during which people would
    meet in each other's homes to discuss ways to improve relations. He
    would like to bring the forums back.

    "I think what [co-founder Linda Maxwell] and I face much too often is
    whatever is going on at the home gets brought to school," Quintanar
    said. "The community needs to really start looking at their own
    issues. We see how kids' ideas of the community are formed at the
    dinner table or in front of the TV when the family is together.

    "I don't think there are many students around who have the personal
    experience of [the Aguirre incident]. But many remember, and it comes
    up from time to time from kids who were in middle school at the time.
    And they were deeply affected by it. Something like that has got to
    scar you.

    "I think [Aguirre's death] brought people together, but it wasn't
    sustaining. Soon after, the emotion of it wore off, and we became
    complacent," Quintanar said.

    "Could it happen again? I hope not. But are the conditions present?
    Yes. Ignorance and fear of other people, and not knowing people,
    exists. This is a large city now, and it's harder to know people."

    In recent years, Hoover students created a Unity Garden and a
    Friendship Garden on campus as a way of promoting peace and unity in
    the Glendale community. Events like Aguirre's death and the terrorist
    attacks of Sept. 11 prompted students to create the gardens.

    Hoover High senior Jessica Luevano said it is usually teachers who
    bring up the Aguirre incident, not students. Teachers might mention
    it in class when something new happens in the Aguirre case, Jessica
    said. The case is awaiting a second trial after a Nov. 7 mistrial.

    "If anything, I think it kind of brought us all closer together,"
    said Jessica, 17. "There are bad people in every culture. I think
    most of the fights we see here are among kids within the same race."

    Daily High School Principal Gail Rosental said that although some
    parents tell her they perceive Daily - the district's continuation
    high school for students who are at risk of not graduating on
    schedule - as the school for "bad kids," she has few issues with race
    and culture among students on campus. Students come to Daily from all
    of the district's comprehensive high schools.

    "Because we are so small, nobody is invisible here, and we don't have
    the same kinds of problems the huge schools have," Rosental said. "We
    tend not to have intercultural tensions. When we do have tensions,
    it's rare, and it's usually not rooted in ethnic problems.

    "It's usually more of a 'You were talking to my girlfriend' or 'You
    said something about me to somebody' kind of thing. If anything, it's
    two people who used to be friends, and it's social and personal."
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